20050815

Chen urges democratization of China

CALL TO ACTION: In an address at the first meeting of the Democratic Pacific Union, the President said China's economic rise should be accompanied by democratic reforms

By Shih Hsiu-chuan

STAFF REPORTER

President Chen Shui-bian yesterday called upon the political leaders of 26 Pacific Rim nations to help bring democracy to China -- something he sees as a key mission of the newly-founded Democratic Pacific Union (DPU).

Chen made the remarks while addressing the inaugural meeting of the DPU, a non-governmental organization with representatives of 26 nations around the Pacific Rim that is dedicated to promoting the value of democracy worldwide. Taiwan took the lead in forming the union.

The DPU, which is based on the principles of "democracy, peace and prosperity," was formally established yesterday in Taipei. Seventy-one guests attended a two-day forum to exchange opinions regarding the principles.

The guests included the presidents of Costa Rica and Guatemala, as well as other high ranking government officials, professionals, academics and representatives of major NGOs.

While saying that the establishment of the DPU provides a new impetus for the realization of a democratic, peaceful, and prosperous Pacific century, Chen said that it is regrettable that China remains a missing part of the DPU.

"I would like to remind all of you that the so-called `rise of China' is based on many complex factors, such as China's huge market and economic appeal, its expanding military capabilities, the potential for socio-economic turmoil, the political center's ability to stay in control and the issue of whether political democratization can be liberalized steadily. China's rise is not one-dimensional," Chen said.

Chen said that no one wishes to see China collapse because the international community would not be able to bear the consequences of such a collapse.

He said that the rise of China must be accompanied by "peaceful awakening" and "the beginning of democracy." DPU members must come together to shoulder the mission of transforming China into a positive force in the Pacific Community of democracies.

The inauguration of the DPU coincided with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II with Japan's surrender.

Vice President Annette Lu, who was just elected as the DPU chair, gave a keynote speech at the inaugural meeting, saying that while the establishment of the DPU may be a small step for some, it is a giant leap for the 23 million people of Taiwan.

"With Japan's surrender 60 years ago, five decades of colonial rule in Taiwan was brought to an end. Now, China, which was invaded by Japan, threatens not just Taiwan but every corner of the Pacific Ocean with its aggressive expansion of military power. Taiwan has suffered its share of tragic historical absurdity," she said.

Given these experiences, Lu said that Taiwan is honored to be able to stand at an important historical crossroads with leaders of Pacific Rim countries who desire a brighter future for the Pacific.

"We believe that without democracy, there is no peace; without democracy and peace, there is no genuine prosperity," Lu said.

Dr Abel Pacheco de la Espriella, the president of Costa Rica, called on the DPU's 26 nations to eliminate the abuse of marine resources so that sustainable development can be achieved.

The president said that the nations should work hand in hand to eliminate injustice in the society and create a fair and equitable future for their people.

President of Guatemala Oscar Jose Rafael Berger Perdomo stressed the importance of democracy Sunday, saying that democratization helps create jobs and distribute wealth more equally.

All countries should strive to build democratic political systems to allow the people to take part in the policy-making process, Berger said.

Chinese intrusions near Matsu on the rise

STAFF WRITER

Taiwanese fishermen's rights and national security have been jeopardized by Chinese fishing vessels, which have recently been intruding into waters of Matsu more often than ever, according to members of a fishing association there yesterday.

The association told the Liberty Times, the Taipei Times' sister newspaper, that some of its members had become upset with the Chinese fishermen, who not only intruded into Taiwan's waters to fish but also went ashore to rest.

Chen Jui-chang of the association told the Liberty Times that the phenomenon had existed for a long time but that the situation had gotten worse than ever because of the Coast Guard Administration's (CGA) lax management.

"Recently, waters off Matsu have become like wide-open doors, through which Chinese fishing vessels can come and go freely," Chen said.

For example, on Aug. 6, several Chinese vessels were only 10m away from the port of Niuchiao Auko. The behavior obviously violates Taiwan's laws, which entitle the coast guard to patrol waters as far as 6km from the coast to keep Chinese vessels out of the area.

Chen said the association members spent two months getting footage of intrusions by Chinese fishing vessels in waters off Matsu and produced a video to spotlight the serious problem.

Chen said that some Chinese fishing vessels caught by the CGA were released after bribing officials with high-quality fish. Meanwhile, some local government officials admitted that Chinese fishing vessels had intruded into the Matsu area not only to fish, but also to engage in smuggling.

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) officials told the Times yesterday that the Chinese government had refused to negotiate with Taiwan on the issue. However, Taiwan will not give up trying to communicate with Beijing in the spirit of mutual benefit and friendly cooperation.

MAC officials stressed that more manpower and resources would be invested soon to crack down on smuggling from China.

Annette Lu undeterred by dry eyes, scratched cornea

By Shih Hsiu-chuan

STAFF REPORTER

Chen Yao-chang, the convener of a medical treatment committee for the vice president, said that the lights in the auditorium and the flash of light of the cameras caused a small scratch on Lu's cornea, a common injury that afflicts xerophthalmia sufferers.

"The vice president was treated in the hospital for 20 minutes. As it is not a serious problem, she should recover soon," Chen said.

Cho said that Lu, who planned to attend the entire DPU meeting, couldn't stand the pain in her eye and eventually agreed to act on her doctor's advice to be treated in the hospital and then go back home to take some rest.

Lu felt pain since she gave a keynote speech at the inaugural meeting around 11am, but she insisted on attending the meeting until the end, accompanying the attendants for lunch and having an interview with some guests in the afternoon, Cho said.

Cho said that Lu went to the hospital at 3pm and returned to attend the DPU forum in the evening.

Analyst says US could consider Taiwan a lost cause

BY RICH CHANG

STAFF REPORTER

Since the Taiwanese government has failed to get the NT$480 billion (US$15 billion) special arms budget approved in the legislature, some analysts have begun to warn that Taiwan could lose its status as a place of major strategic importance for the US in East Asia. Some experts are saying that the US could withdraw its security commitments to Taiwan if the people of the democratic nation decide not to take visible steps to defend their country against the possibility of a military attack from China.

"The US has been impatient at the government's inability to get the special arms bill passed," Chang Kuo-cheng, the former director of the Democratic Progressive Party's department of Chinese affairs, said.

"But the US has been even more concerned about whether the boycott of the arms bill by the pan-blue parties and its voters signifies an indifferent attitude by Taiwanese toward their country's defense," he said.

"This would imply that there would be the possibility of a peaceful unification with China in the future," he said.

Chang noted that if the US concluded that unification was possible, the country would gradually withdraw its security commitments toward Taiwan and would stop selling advanced weaponry to the country, because Washington would be concerned that the technology might fall into the hands of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Chang said that since the pan-blue's boycott of the arms procurement bill has been through legislative procedures -- a democratic process -- it might be considered a sign that Taiwanese don't see China as a threat. The US would have no choice but to accept the decision reached by the people of a democratic county, Chang added.

He said a vicious circle might occur if the pro-China trend gets stronger in Taiwan, and that once the US gradually withdrew its security commitments toward the ocuntry, the military weakness of the nation would make even more Taiwanese accept the pro-China approach.

Chang said history showed that the US had abandoned its security commitments toward foreign countries when necessary. He said the US had abandoned former president Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government and had withdrawn from South Vietnam.

In fact, the US closed its embassy in Taiwan on March 1, 1979, under the administration of then-president Chiang Ching-kuo, and established the Taiwan Relations Act in the same year.

Chang said "the US would lose few strategic interests in East Asia if Taiwan reconciled with China or even unified with the country in the future."

Chang said that "the US understands" that China would not confront Washington and Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean after it unifies with Taiwan.

"China's strategic interests are in the country's west and south, its oil supply resources and its transportation sea lanes -- not in the east," Chang said.

He said that because of its huge business interests with the US and Japan, China would have no interest in confronting those two countries in the Pacific Ocean.

Chang said that if China unified with Taiwan, it would immediately declare Taiwan a demilitarized area, and also ensure that sea-lanes through the Taiwan Strait were safe for the US, Japan and other countries.

On the other hand, Ou Si-fu, a researcher with the Institute for National Policy Research, who has also provided research papers on the PLA for the Mainland Affairs Council and Ministry of National Defense, said the US would not withdraw its security commitments toward Taiwan, because the US would want to use a containment policy toward China.

Ou said that the US had 80 P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft stationed in Japan, and Japan itself had 120 P-3Cs intensively patrolling the waters of East Asia, including the waters around Taiwan.

"That means that the US would not decrease its military deployments in East Asia even if Taiwan was unable to defend itself," Ou added.

Ou said, however, that the US does not have to rely on Taiwan to defend the so-called the "first island chain," which runs from the Aleutians through Japan, South Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines to Singapore, because China has geographic disadvantages in regards to the Pacific Ocean.

He said Chinese submarines must pass through one of the few narrow passages in order to enter waters off of eastern Taiwan, and that the US and Japan's advanced anti-submarine forces could easily bottle up the Chinese subs there.

`For Thucydides, the butchery illustrated what too often happens when one power defies another without the armed strength to protect itself. "Questions of justice," he warned, "arise only between equals." Now as then, effective diplomacy rests on a rough parity of hard power as much as on law or abstract. In other words, Taiwan must arm itself if it expects equitable treatment from China.'

The near-simultaneous publication of US and Japanese reports analyzing Chinese military power has riveted Taiwan's attention on strategic conditions in the Strait. Both reports documented China's swift military buildup. While the Pentagon hedged about Chinese intentions, however, the Japan Defense Agency strongly implied that Beijing was shifting to an offensive stance.

The common wisdom among Taiwanese strategists holds that the military balance in the Strait will tip in favor of China as early as next year. Improvements to Chinese air, naval and missile forces will ultimately negate the advantage in quality the Taiwanese forces have long relied on to deter Chinese military action.

Burgeoning military power may tempt Beijing to settle the cross-strait impasse by force. But "island warfare" endangers not only islanders but land powers that venture seaward.

Taiwan must preserve the military balance if it wants to choose its own destiny. For its part, China should not assume that military superiority guarantees it victory in a trial of arms.

Wars of antiquity bear out the perils of island warfare. Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, recounts an event relevant to Taiwan. During its decades-long struggle with rival Sparta, Athens dispatched an embassy to Melos, an island city-state strategically located off the Greek coast, with an ultimatum: submit to the Athenian empire or be destroyed.

Melian leaders balked, but their city lacked military means adequate to fend off an Athenian assault. The Athenian ambassadors sneered at the Melians' appeals to justice, proclaiming that the strong do as they will in world affairs, while "the weak suffer what they must" when their interests clash with those of the strong.

True to their word, the Athenians crushed the island's feeble resistance, put its male population to death, and enslaved the women and children.

For Thucydides, the butchery illustrated what too often happens when one power defies another without the armed strength to protect itself.

Now as then, effective diplomacy rests on a rough parity of hard power as much as on law or abstract ideals. In other words, Taiwan must arm itself if it expects equitable treatment from China.

Still, Thucydides offers China a cautionary tale of its own. A few years before the bloodletting at Melos, an Athenian expeditionary force landed at Pylos, some fifty miles from Sparta, and erected a fort to harass the Spartans in their own backyard. Grasping the danger, Spartan leaders dispatched forces by land and sea to wrest the Athenian outpost from its defenders.

After an initial skirmish, Spartan hoplite warriors invested Pylos by land. Another force landed on Sphacteria, a long, narrow island athwart the harbor mouth, to cut the fort off by sea.

Spartan fortunes soured when fifty Athenian warships appeared unexpectedly, putting the Spartan flotilla to flight "at once," disabling or capturing "a good many vessels," ramming others, and towing away beached vessels abandoned by their crews. Proud Spartan infantrymen were reduced to wading into the surf in a futile effort to recover their vessels.

"The stunning effect and importance" of the Athenian naval attack, notes Yale University professor Donald Kagan, "cannot be exaggerated."

Their expeditionary force blockaded, Spartan leaders sent an embassy to Athens to sue for peace, only to have their overtures rebuffed by an Athenian assembly that was in no mood for compromise. Reinforcements sailed for the island.

Athenian troops overwhelmed and captured the Spartan defenders, who were brought to Athens as hostages.

Pylos humbled Sparta's vaunted land power, underlining the dangers of island campaigning for a land power facing a dominant sea power in its element.

Judging from the Spartan example, time may not be on China's side in a cross-strait war, as the Pentagon report suggests.

Should the US Navy force the Strait after a Chinese amphibious landing, Chinese forces could find themselves isolated and under siege, much like the Spartan hoplites.

The repercussions of defeat could be as frightful for China's international standing -- even its domestic stability -- as they were for Sparta's.

Both Taipei and Beijing, then, should heed Thucydides' wisdom. To discourage Chinese adventurism, Taiwanese lawmakers should set aside the prolonged bickering that has stalled a proposed special arms package in legislature.

They should either approve this package or negotiate another one that better meets Taiwan's military needs.

James Holmes is a senior research associate at the Center for International Trade and Security, University of Georgia.